YCDC election commission calls for full voting rights

By Kyaw Phone Kyaw   |   Friday, 27 March 2015
An election commission report into Yangon’s heavily criticised municipal election in December has recommended scrapping the one-vote-per-household rule and allowing all adults over the age of 18 to cast a ballot, commission head U Tin Aye said yesterday.

A Yangon resident votes in the December 2014 election. (Aung Htay Hlaing/The Myanmar Times)

“The constitution gives voting rights to every person over 18. Only the YCDC election acted like that. It is against civil rights,” he told The Myanmar Times.

Most people in Yangon lost their voting rights in the December 27 election, the first municipal election in the city for 50 years. Out of 5.2 million people, only 401,000 were able to ballots under the election act, which gave one vote per household that possessed government residency documents. The act was widely criticised by regional hluttaw MPs, election monitors, civil society organisations and the media.

“The next election should be held after amending the election act. The act has many weak points,” U Tin Aye said.

Ko Aung Tun, an independent researcher involved in the review of the YCDC election, agreed that voting should be expanded. But he noted that most political parties – which are banned from contesting municipal elections – were not interested in amending the law.

“Now only civil society organizations speak a lot about this, but the parties don’t like it. They are ignoring the issue,” he said, adding that they were only interested in national elections.

He said the law should be changed to allow political parties to compete.

“They should also raise public awareness. And they should point out the specific facts about amending the act in the Yangon regional hluttaw,” he said.

The act does not specify limits for campaign financing, allowing the richest candidates to win seats, he said.

U Tin Aye said preparation for elections should be extended from three months to at least six.

Daw Nyo Nyo Thin, a Yangon region MP, said she had already submitted a proposal to the speaker of the regional hluttaw that the YCDC election act be amended before end-2015. She said she was hopeful that the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which holds a massive majority in the hluttaw, would not oppose amending the act following a barrage of criticism by the public and media.

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က်ပ္သိန္း ၅,၀၀၀၊ လူ ၁၀၀ ေက်ာ္ႏွင့္ စည္ပင္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ

ေက်ာ္ဖုန္းေက်ာ္   |   Thursday, 11 December 2014

ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ခန္းမ။ အဲဒီခန္းမႀကီးထဲမွာ အသစ္တက္လာတဲ့ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္အဆင့္ လူထုကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေေလးဦးလည္း ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ဝန္နဲ႔အတူတူ႐ံုးထုိင္ၾကမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ Photo: filckr.com

သင္ဟာ ရန္ကုန္သား တစ္ေယာက္ျဖစ္တယ္ ဆိုဦးေတာ့ အသက္ ၈၃ ႏွစ္အရြယ္ အဘိုးႀကီး၊
အဘြားႀကီး မဟုတ္ေသးဘူးဆိုရင္ စည္ပင္သာယာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ မဲေပးဖူးမွာ မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။
အေၾကာင္းက လြတ္လပ္ေရးရၿပီး ေနာက္တစ္ႏွစ္ကတည္းက ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕မွာ စည္ပင္သာယာ
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဆိုတာမ်ဳိး လံုး၀ကို မရွိေတာ့တာေၾကာင့္ပါ။

စည္ပင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ မလုပ္တာ ၆၅ ႏွစ္ၾကာခဲ့ပါၿပီ။ ျမန္မာတစ္ႏုိင္ငံလံုးမွာ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္
နယ္နိမိတ္ဟာ လူဦးေရ အသိပ္သည္းဆံုး ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ရန္ကုန္တစ္ၿမိဳ႕တည္းမွာတင္ လူရွစ္သန္းခန္႔ ေနထုိင္ေၾကာင္း သန္းေခါင္ စာရင္းမွတ္တမ္းေတြမွာ
ေတြ႕ရပါတယ္။

အဲဒီ သန္းေပါင္းမ်ားစြာေသာ လူေတြအတြက္ ေရ၊ မိလႅာ၊ သန္႔ရွင္းေရးစတဲ့ ေန႔စဥ္ဘ၀
လိုအပ္ခ်က္ေတြကို ၀န္ေဆာင္မႈေပးရတဲ့ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းႀကီးကို စီမံခန္႔ခြဲမယ့္ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြကို ယခုလ
၂၇ ရက္ေန႔မွာ ေရြးခ်ယ္ေတာ့မွာပါ။

ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္စည္ပင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေကာ္မရွင္ရဲ႕ ဥကၠ႒ ဦးတင္ေအး ကေတာ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရးစနစ္က
ဒီမုိကေရစီဆုိရင္ အဲဒီႏုိင္ငံေရးစနစ္နဲ႔ ကိုက္ညီတဲ့ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြရွိဖို႔ လိုအပ္လို႔
ဒီေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို က်င္းပတာလို႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။

"ႏုိင္ငံေရးစနစ္ဟာ ျပည္သူေတြ ပူးေပါင္း ပါ၀င္တဲ့စနစ္ျဖစ္လာတာနဲ႔အမွ် (အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြမွာ)
ျပည္သူေတြက ေရြးေကာက္တင္ ေျမႇာက္တဲ့ ကုိယ္စားလွယ္ေတြ ပါလာဖုိ႔ လိုတယ္"လို႔ သူက
ေျပာပါတယ္။

စိန္ေခၚမႈေတြရွိ
ဒါေပမဲ့လည္း ဆယ္စုႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ဒီလိုေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို က်င္းပခဲ့တဲ့အစဥ္ အလာမရွိခဲ့တဲ့အျပင္
အခုေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ အတြက္ ျပင္ဆင္ခ်ိန္ဟာလည္း အခ်ိန္ သံုးလသာ ရခဲ့တာေၾကာင့္ စိန္ေခၚမႈေတြ
ရွိေနတယ္လို႔ ေကာ္မရွင္အဖြဲ႕၀င္ေတြက ဆုိပါတယ္။

ရန္ကုန္အေနာက္ပိုင္းခ႐ိုင္ကေန ခ႐ိုင္အဆင့္ ၀င္ၿပိဳင္မယ့္ ရဲေက်ာ္စြာဆုတံဆိပ္ရွင္ မီးသတ္
ဒုတပ္ရင္းမႉး ဦးေအာင္လွဟာ ယခုလ ၃ ရက္ေန႔က သူ႔မဲဆႏၵနယ္ျဖစ္တဲ့ ၾကည့္ျမင္တိုင္
တစ္ဖက္ကမ္းက ရြာေတြကို ဆုိင္ကယ္နဲ႔ လွည့္လည္စည္း႐ံုးေရး ဆင္းတဲ့အခါ ျပႆနာတခ်ဳိ႕ကို
ေတြ႕ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။

သူ႔မဲဆႏၵနယ္ထဲက အိမ္ေထာင္စု ေထာင္ေပါင္းေတြ မဲေပးခြင့္ ဆံုး႐ႈံးေနတာပါ။
"အားနည္းခ်က္ကေတာ့ အခ်ိန္မရတာပဲ။ မဲစာရင္းေတြကို တစ္ပတ္အတြင္းေလာက္
အၿပီးလုပ္ၾကေတာ့ ဘယ္လိုမွ မမီႏုိင္ဘူးေလ" လို႔ သူက ျမန္မာတုိင္း(မ္)ကို ေျပာပါတယ္။
သူ႔ရဲ႕ မဲဆႏၵနယ္အတြင္းက အိမ္ေထာင္စု ၂,၀၀၀ ေက်ာ္ေလာက္ မဲစာရင္းထဲမွာ မပါဘဲ
က်န္ခဲ့တယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။

အဲဒီကိစၥအတြက္ ေကာ္မရွင္က အစည္းအေ၀းထုိင္ၿပီး မဲစာရင္းေတြကို ျပန္စစ္ကာ ထပ္တိုးဖို႔
လုပ္သြားမယ္လို႔ေတာ့ သိရပါတယ္။

အျငင္းပြားမႈမ်ား
ဒီလုိကိစၥေတြအျပင္ ကိုုယ္စားလွယ္ ေလာင္းတခ်ဳိ႕ရဲ႕ အျငင္းပြားမႈေတြလည္း ရွိေနပါေသးတယ္။
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ၀င္ၿပိဳင္မယ့္ ကုိယ္စားလွယ္ေလာင္းေတြကို မဲဆြယ္ဆုိင္းဘုတ္စိုက္ထူခြင့္
ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္စည္ပင္က ခြင့္မျပဳပါဘူး။

ဒါေပမဲ့ ကုိယ္စားလွယ္ေလာင္း တစ္ဦး ျဖစ္သူ ေဒၚဆူဇန္နာလွလွစိုး က "ကြ်န္မတို႔ကိုေတာ့
ေကာ္မရွင္က ဆုိင္းဘုတ္ထူခြင့္ မေပးပါဘူး။ ဒါေပမဲ့ တခ်ဳိ႕လူေတြကေတာ့ ဆိုင္းဘုတ္ေတြ
တင္ေနတာေတြ႕ရပါတယ္။ ကြ်န္မကို ဓာတ္ပံုေတြ႐ိုက္ၿပီး ပို႔ေပးထားတာေတြ ရွိပါတယ္" လို႔
ျမန္မာတုိင္း(မ္)ကို ေျပာပါတယ္။

ေကာ္မရွင္ဥကၠ႒ ဦးတင္ေအး ကေတာ့ အဲဒီဆုိင္းဘုတ္ေတြဟာ သူတို႔ေထာင္ခြင့္ျပဳထားတာ
မဟုတ္ဘဲ မၾကာခင္ ျဖဳတ္ခ်ခိုင္းသြားမွာျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေျပာပါတယ္။

မဲဆြယ္စည္း႐ံုးဖို႔အတြက္ အခ်ိန္ သိပ္မက်န္ေတာ့တဲ့ အခ်ိန္မွာ မဲဆြယ္ပြဲအတြက္ ခြင့္ျပဳမိန္႔ေတြ
တင္ေနရတာဟာလည္း အခက္အခဲ တစ္ခုျဖစ္ေနေၾကာင္း ေဒၚဆူဇန္နာလွလွစုိး က ေျပာပါတယ္။
"ရက္ေတြကလည္း အရမ္းနည္းေနၿပီ၊ ကြ်န္မ ၿပိဳင္ရမွာကလည္း ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ခုနစ္ခုေတာင္ဆိုေတာ့
ေတာ္ေတာ္ေလးကို တက္သုတ္႐ုိက္လုပ္မွပဲ ရေတာ့မယ္"လို႔ သူက ေျပာပါတယ္။

အလားတူပင္ မဲ႐ံုေစာင့္ၾကည့္မယ့္ မဲ႐ံု ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ အမည္စာရင္းေပးရန္လည္း
အခ်ိန္သံုးရက္သာေပးသျဖင့္ အလြန္ခက္ခဲေၾကာင္း သူက ေျပာပါေသးတယ္။
"ကြ်န္မ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ခုနစ္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွာ မဲ႐ံု ၃၆၇ ႐ံု ရွိတယ္။ အဲဒါကုိ တစ္႐ံုတစ္ေယာက္နဲ႔ လူ သံုးရာ
ေက်ာ္ႀကီးကို သံုးရက္အတြင္း ဓာတ္ပံုႏွစ္ပံုနဲ႔ ကိုယ္ေရးရာဇ၀င္ ေပးပါဆိုတာ ဘယ္လုိမွ
မျဖစ္ႏုိင္ဘူး"လို႔ သူက ေျပာပါတယ္။

ရန္ကုန္အေနာက္ပိုင္းခ႐ိုင္ မဲဆႏၵနယ္က ၀င္ေရာက္ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္မယ့္ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေလာင္း
ဦးခင္လႈိင္ ကလည္း ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ၀င္ရင္ ပါတီႏုိင္ငံေရး ကင္းရွင္းရမယ္လို႔ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ
နည္းဥပေဒထဲမွာ ျပ႒ာန္းထားတာဟာ မဆီေလ်ာ္ေၾကာင္း တိုင္းလႊတ္ေတာ္ ဥကၠ႒ထံ စာနဲ႔
အေၾကာင္းၾကားထားပါတယ္။

အဲဒီဥပေဒဟာ ယခုေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ က်င္းပဖို႔ ရည္ရြယ္ၿပီး ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္၀န္ ဦးလွျမင့္ က လက္မွတ္
ေရးထုိးကာ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့ သံုးလက ထုတ္ျပန္ထားတဲ့ နည္းဥပေဒျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ဥပေဒမွာ စည္ပင္ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေလာင္းေတြရဲ႕ အရည္အခ်င္း သတ္မွတ္ခ်က္နဲ႔ ေရြးေကာက္
တင္ေျမႇာက္ခံပိုင္ခြင့္ မရွိသူေတြအတြက္ ကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္ေတြမွာ 'ႏုိင္ငံေရး မလုပ္ရ' ဟု
ျပ႒ာန္းထားျခင္း မရွိဘဲ ဥပေဒရဲ႕ ေနာက္ဆံုးပိုင္း အေထြေထြက႑မွာသာ အဲဒီ အခ်က္ကို
ထည့္သြင္းထားတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ယခု ကိစၥနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္စည္ပင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေကာ္မရွင္ဥကၠ႒ ဦးတင္ေအး က
"ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ေကာ္မရွင္ကေတာ့ ျပ႒ာန္းထားတဲ့ နည္းဥပေဒအတိုင္းပဲ လုပ္ရမွာပဲ"လို႔
ေျပာၾကားပါတယ္။

ရန္္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ စည္ပင္သာယာေရးေကာ္မတီ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဟာ ဥပေဒဆိုင္ရာ လုပ္ထံုးလုပ္နည္း
ေတြနဲ႔ မညီဘဲ လြဲေခ်ာ္မႈေတြ ရွိေနေၾကာင္း၊ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ဦးစီးက်င္းပမယ့္ ေကာ္မတီဟာ
၂၀၁၃ ခုႏွစ္ စည္ပင္သာယာဥပေဒအရ ဖြဲ႕ထားျခင္းမဟုတ္သျဖင့္ ယခုေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ၎တို႔က
ဦးစီးျခင္းဟာ မသင့္ေလ်ာ္ေၾကာင္း ရန္ကုန္တိုင္းေဒသႀကီး လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စားလွယ္  ေဒါက္တာညိဳညိဳသင္း က လႊတ္ေတာ္မွာ ေ၀ဖန္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ အခ်က္အလက္မ်ား
ရန္ကုန္တိုင္းေဒသႀကီးမွာ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ေပါင္း ၄၅ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ရွိတဲ့အနက္ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ စည္ပင္အပိုင္
နယ္နိမိတ္ျဖစ္တဲ့ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ၃၃ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေတြ က်င္းပမွာပါ။
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအတြက္ က်ပ္သိန္း၅,၀၀၀ အကုန္အက်ခံမွာလည္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေန႔ျဖစ္တဲ့ ဒီဇင္ဘာလ ၂၇ ရက္ေန႔မွာ သန္းေခါင္စာရင္းတစ္ခု (မိသားစုတစ္စု)ကို
၁၈ ႏွစ္ျပည့္သူတစ္ဦးပဲ မဲေပးခြင့္ရမွာ ျဖစ္ၿပီးေတာ့ အဲဒီတစ္ဦးဟာ မဲပံုးခုနစ္ပံုးမွာ မဲထည့္ရမွာ
ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

မဲ႐ံုတိုင္းမွာ အကန္႔သံုးကန္႔ရွိမွာျဖစ္ၿပီး ပထမဦးဆံုးအကန္႔မွာ မဲပံုးတစ္ပံုးရွိမွာျဖစ္ၿပီး အဲဒီပံုးဟာ
ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္အဆင့္ ေကာ္မတီ၀င္ကို ေရြးခ်ယ္မယ့္ မဲပံုးျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ကိုယ္ႀကိဳက္ႏွစ္သက္ သူရဲ႕ ေဘးမွာ အမွတ္ျခစ္ၿပီး ပံုးထဲ ထည့္ရမွာပါ။
ေနာက္ ႏွစ္ကန္႔ မွာေတာ့ စိမ္း၊ နီ၊ ျပာ ဆိုၿပီး အေရာင္မတူတဲ့ မဲပံုး သံုးပံုးစီ ရွိမွာပါ။
အဲဒီသံုးပံုးကေတာ့ ရပ္မိရပ္ဖ၊ တတ္သိပညာရွင္၊ လူမႈေရးအတြက္ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေတြကို
ေရြးရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

မဲလက္မွတ္ကလည္း သံုးေရာင္ပါ။ ႀကိဳက္တဲ့သူကို အမွတ္ျခစ္ၿပီး လက္မွတ္နဲ႔ အေရာင္တူတဲ့
ပံုးထဲကို ထည့္ရမွာပါ။

အေရာင္ မွားထည့္ရင္လည္း ပယ္မဲမျဖစ္ဘူးလို႔ ေကာ္မရွင္က ေျပာပါတယ္။
က်န္တာကေတာ့ ႏုိင္ငံလံုးဆုိင္ရာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲႀကီးအတုိင္းပဲ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ဒီေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကေန ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္အဆင့္အတြက္ ေလးဦး၊ ခ႐ိုင္အဆင့္အတြက္ ၁၂ ဦး ၿမိဳ႕နယ္အဆင့္
အတြက္ကေတာ့ ၉၉ ဦး စုစုေပါင္း ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ စုစုေပါင္း ၁၁၅ ဦး ေရြးခ်ယ္မွာျဖစ္ၿပီး ၀င္ၿပိဳင္ဖို႔
စာရင္းေပးထားတာကေတာ့ လူ ၂၉၀ ေက်ာ္ရွိတယ္လို႔ ေကာ္မရွင္ရဲ႕ အခ်က္အလက္ေတြအရ
သိရပါတယ္။

ဒါေပမဲ့ ဒီေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကေန တင္ေျမႇာက္လိုက္တဲ့ ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေတြဟာ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ အစိုးရသက္တမ္း
အတြင္းသာ အက်ံဳး၀င္တာေၾကာင့္ သူတို႔ တာ၀န္ထမ္းေဆာင္ခ်ိန္ဟာ 'တစ္ႏွစ္' သက္တမ္းပဲရွိမွာ
ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
၂၀၁၅ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ထပ္လုပ္ရဦးမွာပါ။

ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ ည႐ႈခင္း။ အသစ္တက္လာသည့္ ေကာ္မတီဝင္မ်ားသည္ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္လွပေရးထိန္းသိမ္းရန္ တာဝန္ရွိလာမည္ျဖစ္သည္။ Photo: businessinsider.com

ဘာေတြေျပာင္းလဲသြားမလဲ
အရင္တုန္းကေတာ့ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္၀န္ကိုလည္း သမၼတက တိုက္႐ိုက္ခန္႔ၿပီး က်န္တဲ့
စည္ပင္ေကာ္မတီ၀င္ ေလးဦးကိုလည္း အစိုးရက ခန္႔ထားပါတယ္။
အဲဒီ ငါးဦးကပဲ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္စည္ပင္ကို အဓိကစီမံခန္႔ခြဲေနတာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အခုေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ အၿပီးမွာေတာ့ လက္ရွိ အဲဒီ ငါးဦးအျပင္ လူထုကေရြးေကာက္လိုက္သူ
ေလးဦးပါ ပူးေပါင္းၿပီး စီမံခန္႔ခြဲခြင့္ရမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ခ႐ိုင္နဲ႔ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္အဆင့္ေတြမွာ ဆိုရင္လည္း ထိုနည္းတူ အရင္က အစိုးရ ၀န္ထမ္းျဖစ္တဲ့
စည္ပင္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးမႉး တစ္ဦးတည္း စိတ္ႀကိဳက္ျခယ္လွယ္ေနရာကေန ေနာင္မွာ
လူထုကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေတြက စည္ပင္သာယာကိစၥေတြမွာ ၀င္ေရာက္ စီမံခြင့္ရလာမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အဲဒီအျပင္ ျပည္သူက ေရြးလုိက္တဲ့သူျဖစ္တဲ့ ရပ္မိရပ္ဖကိုယ္စားလွယ္ဟာ ခ႐ုိင္နဲ႔ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္စည္ပင္ရဲ႕
ဥကၠ႒ရာထူးကို ရရွိမွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

"အခုက ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္စည္ပင္ေကာ္မတီ၀င္ကို ေတြ႕ဖို႔က အင္မတန္ခက္ခဲတာ။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ကြ်န္ေတာ္သာ
ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမွာ ႏုိင္သြားခဲ့ရင္ ရဲရဲႀကီးတာ၀န္ယူတာက တစ္ပတ္တစ္ခါ၊ ဒါမွမဟုတ္ တစ္လတစ္ခါ
သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္း ပြဲလုပ္မယ္။ ႀကိဳက္တာသာေမး။ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ စည္ပင္ဆုိတာ ကာကြယ္ေရးအဖြဲ႕၊
လံုျခံဳေရး အဖြဲ႕မဟုတ္ ၀န္ေဆာင္မႈေပးတဲ့အဖြဲ႕ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ဘာမွလွ်ဳိ႕၀ွက္စရာ မလိုဘူး။
ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္သစ္ စီမံကိန္း ဘယ္ကုမၸဏီ ေပးမယ္ဆိုတာမ်ဳိးကအစ ဘာမွလွ်ဳိ႕၀ွက္ထားစရာ
မလုိဘူး"လို႔ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ေလာင္းတစ္ဦးျဖစ္သူ ဦး၀င္းခ်ဳိ က ေျပာပါတယ္။
http://kyawphonekyaw

ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ လူ ၁,၃၀၀ အတြက္ စည္ပင္သန္႔ရွင္းေရး၀န္ထမ္း တစ္ေယာက္သာရွိ

ေက်ာ္ဖုန္းေက်ာ္   |   Tuesday, 17 March 2015

ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္စည္ပင္၀န္ထမ္းတစ္ဦး ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕လယ္တြင္ အမႈိက္သိမ္းဆည္းေနစဥ္။ ဓာတ္ပံု - ျမန္မာတိုင္း(မ္)

ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ၏ လူဦးေရအသိပ္သည္းဆံုးၿမိဳ႕ ျဖစ္သည့္ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ သန္႔ရွင္းေရးႏွင့္ အမႈိက္သိမ္း
၀န္ထမ္းမွာ လိုအပ္သည္ထက္ နည္းပါးေနရာ လူဦးေရ ၁,၃၀၀ ခန္႔အတြက္ သန္႔ရွင္းေရး၀န္ထမ္း
တစ္ဦးႏႈန္းသာရွိေၾကာင္း ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္စည္ပင္သာယာေရးေကာ္မတီ၏ ကိန္းဂဏန္းမ်ားအရ
သိရသည္။

၂၀၁၃ ခုႏွစ္ သန္းေခါင္စာရင္းအရ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕တြင္ လူဦးေရ ၅ ဒသမ ၂ သန္း ေနထုိင္လ်က္
ရွိသည္ဟု သိရၿပီး ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ စည္ပင္သာယာေရး ေကာ္မတီ၏ သန္႔ရွင္းေရးႏွင့္ အမႈိက္သိမ္း
၀န္ထမ္းမွာ ၄,၁၀၀ ခန္႔သာရွိေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

သန္႔ရွင္းေရးဌာန တစ္ခုလံုးတြင္ ၀န္ထမ္းစုစုေပါင္း ၄,၉၀၀ ခန္႔ရွိသည့္အနက္ ၈၀၀ ခန္႔မွာ
႐ံုး၀န္ထမ္းမ်ားျဖစ္ၾကသည္။

ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္ပိုင္နက္ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ ၃၃ နယ္တြင္ လမ္းေပါင္း တစ္ေသာင္းေက်ာ္ရွိသျဖင့္ လမ္းႏွစ္လမ္းအတြက္
သန္႔ရွင္းေရး၀န္ထမ္း တစ္ဦးႏႈန္းခန္႔သာ ရွိေနသည္။

"ေပ ၈၅၀ ရွည္တဲ့ ဗုိလ္ကေလးေဈး လမ္းတစ္ခုတည္းကိုေတာင္ လူ ၁၃၀၊ ကား ငါးစီးနဲ႔ က်က်နန
သန္႔ရွင္းေရး လုပ္လိုက္တာ တစ္မနက္ခင္းအခ်ိန္ကုန္တယ္။ လမ္းေပါင္း တစ္ေသာင္းဆိုရင္
စဥ္းစားသာ ၾကည့္ေတာ့။ တစ္လမ္းကို တစ္ခါရွင္းၿပီးရင္ ေနာက္တစ္ခါ ျပန္ရွင္းဖုိ႔ဆိုတာလည္း
ေတာ္ေတာ္မလြယ္ဘူး"ဟု ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္စည္ပင္ေကာ္မတီ၀င္ ေဒါက္တာေအးမင္းက ေျပာသည္။

"လမ္းေဘးေဈးသည္ေတြကလည္း အမႈိက္ပစ္ၾကတယ္။ ေျမာင္းေတြပိတ္တာေတြလည္း ရွိတယ္။
လမ္းေပၚမွာ အမႈိက္ပစ္တာတာေတြကလည္း ေန႔စဥ္ဆိုေတာ့ တကယ္ေတာ့ ေန႔စဥ္ေသခ်ာ
သန္႔ရွင္းေရး လုပ္ဖို႔လိုတာ။ အခုက်ေတာ့ တစ္ႏွစ္ေနမွ တစ္ေခါက္ေလာက္ျပန္ၿပီး အဲလိုသန္႔ရွင္း
ႏိုင္တာမ်ိဳးျဖစ္ေနတယ္"ဟု ၎က ေျပာသည္။

ေငြေၾကးအင္အား မလံုေလာက္မႈက အဓိက စိန္ေခၚမႈျဖစ္ေနသည့္အျပင္ ခ်မွတ္ထားေသာ
မူမ်ားအရ ဌာနအလိုက္ ခန္႔အပ္ႏိုင္ေသာ ၀န္ထမ္းဦးေရအကန္႔အသတ္ရွိေနျခင္းေၾကာင့္
လိုအပ္သည့္ ၀န္ထမ္းဦးေရကို တိုးျမႇင့္ခန္႔ထားရန္ မလြယ္ကူေၾကာင္း ၎ကေျပာသည္။

ေတာင္ဒဂံုၿမိဳ႕နယ္တြင္ ေနထုိင္သူ ကိုသန္းထုိက္ေအာင္က ၎တို႔ၿမိဳ႕နယ္တြင္ ေနအိမ္မ်ားသို႔
လိုက္လံအမႈိက္သိမ္းသည့္စနစ္ လံုး၀မရွိသည့္အျပင္ အမႈိက္ပံုမ်ားကို ကားျဖင့္ ၁၀ ရက္လွ်င္
တစ္ႀကိမ္ခန္႔သာ လာေရာက္ သိမ္းဆည္းေလ့ရွိသည္ဟု ေျပာသည္။

"အဆိုးဆံုးအမႈိက္က ပလတ္စတစ္ အမႈိက္ေတြပဲ။ ၿမိဳ႕ထဲက ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ေတြေတာ့ မသိဘူး၊
ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ၿမိဳ႕နယ္ေတြမွာေတာ့ အဲဒါေတြကို စည္ပင္က ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ဖို႔လည္း မလုပ္ဖူး။
သိမ္းလည္းေသခ်ာမသိမ္းဘူး။ ေနာင္ႏွစ္ ၂၀ ေလာက္ဆိုရင္ ကြ်န္ေတာ္တို႔ ေနရာေတြက
ပလတ္စတစ္လႊမ္းေသာၿမိဳ႕ျဖစ္ေတာ့မယ္"ဟု ၎က ေျပာသည္။

ထုိသို႔ ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္စည္ပင္က အမႈိက္မ်ား သိမ္းဆည္းရာတြင္ မႏုိင္မနင္းျဖစ္ေနသည္ကို ကုစားသည့္
အေနျဖင့္ တခ်ိဳ႕လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္မ်ားကို ပုဂၢလိကထံ လႊဲေျပာင္းေပးရန္ စီစဥ္လ်က္ရွိသည္။

အမႈိက္သိမ္းဆည္းျခင္းႏွင့္ အမႈိက္သယ္ယူပို႔ေဆာင္ျခင္းလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားကို လုပ္ကိုင္ရန္ ေနာက္ဆံုး
ဆန္ခါတင္အဆင့္ တင္ဒါ ေအာင္ျမင္သည့္ ကုမၸဏီစာရင္းကို တုိင္းေဒသႀကီးအစိုးရထံသို႔ပင္
တင္ျပထားၿပီဟု ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ ထိန္းသိမ္းေရးႏွင့္ သန္႔ရွင္းေရးဌာန လက္ေထာက္ အင္ဂ်င္နီယာမႉး
ဦးေအာင္ျမင့္ေမာ္က မတ္လ ၁၀ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ျမန္မာတုိင္း(မ္)ကို ေျပာသည္။

ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္စည္ပင္သည္ တစ္ရက္လွ်င္ အမႈိက္တန္ခ်ိန္ ၁,၅၀၀ ခန္႔ သိမ္းဆည္းေနရၿပီး
ထုိအမႈိက္မ်ားကို ထိန္ပင္ႏွင့္ ထား၀ယ္ေခ်ာင္သုသာန္မ်ားအနီးရွိ အမႈိက္စြန္႔ပစ္သည့္ေနရာမ်ားသို႔
သြားေရာက္ စြန္႔ပစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။
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South Korea urged government to end labour protests

By Laignee Barron and Kyaw Phone Kyaw   |   Thursday, 19 March 2015

When Yangon labourers from five foreign-owned factories reeled out the picket lines and demanded a meagre pay boost at the end of January, their calls were initially dismissed. Two weeks later, however, the government shifted into overdrive to quell the demonstrations at the behest of the South Korean embassy, The Myanmar Times has learned.

Police stand guard near protesting workers on March 4. (Naing Wynn Htoon/The Myanmar Times)

After attempts at negotiations stalled on February 17 due to factory owners rejecting demands for a K1000-a-day (US$1) pay rise, the government deployed police units wielding batons to disperse thousands of mostly young, impoverished female workers who had massed in the streets. Dozens of protesters were bloodied and injured in the clashes, with some requiring hospitalisation after they claim police stampeded over them. By the workers’ count, at least 30 went missing, and two union leaders and an activist were jailed.

The crackdown policy appears to have largely been driven by the South Korean ambassador’s backdoor campaign to protect his country’s business interests.

South Korea and Myanmar have long enjoyed mutually beneficial relations. As of 2013, trade between the two countries stood at more than $1.5 billion, and South Korean investment is vital to Myanmar’s booming garment sector. According to industry sources, 20 percent of Myanmar’s garment factories are officially South Korean-owned, with another 20pc likely run by South Koreans through locally registered companies.

The wage strike hit two South Korean garment factories – E-Land Myanmar and Costec International – as well as three other Chinese-owned factories.

The South Korean embassy told The Myanmar Times it requested intervention to protect its factories from financial losses and to ensure the safety of South Korean management. The embassy would not comment on whether the violent crackdowns were what it had in mind when requesting action.

“I know that the lawful right of workers should be respected. However, those striking workers occupied the entrance of the factory and prevented the moving in and out of people and products, which is a serious illegal action causing serious financial loss,” the embassy’s commercial attaché,

Wongyoung Choi, told The Myanmar Times in an email. “The strikers even detained [the South] Korean managing director of Costec on … February 3 for almost 12 hours.”
Workers from Costec have denied taking hostages.

“On February 3, a foreign woman, maybe Korean … went into the factory with about 20 workers around 8am. She didn’t come out of the factory until around 8pm. We did not force her for to stay in the factory,” said Ma Thein Moe Lwin, a worker from Costec.

“If the embassy says we arrested their citizen, it is a lie or misunderstanding.”
But on the premise that South Korean citizens were at risk, the country’s ambassador travelled to Nay Pyi Taw on February 4. In a meeting with Minister for Labour U Aye Myint the ambassador requested steps be taken to “prevent the illegal action of the striking workers”, according to Mr Wongyoung.

When contacted about the alleged detention, a Costec representative hung up on The Myanmar Times.
Officials from the ministry declined to comment on South Korea’s involvement in the clampdowns but on February 23, the Irrawaddy quoted deputy minister U Htin Aung as saying “embassies” had been in touch with senior officials about pursuing action against workers in line with existing laws.

South Korean media also cited an anonymous official from the South Korean foreign ministry who confirmed that the embassy had intervened to end the protests.

This is not the first time South Korean diplomats have orchestrated crackdowns on striking garment workers. In January 2014, the embassy in Cambodia boasted on its Facebook page that its diplomats lobbied Phnom Penh to deploy an elite Cambodian military unit to shut down a protest for higher wages. Ensuing clashes led to five workers being shot dead.

South Korean-owned factories also have history of mistreatment of workers. In 1996, the South Korean manager of a shoe factory in Vietnam was convicted for lining up and beating employees with a shoe. Corporal punishment was an ingrained aspect of South Korean workplaces until the 1970s.

Myanmar’s recent factory demonstrations took a darker turn and escalated further after a second meeting between the South Korean ambassador and senior parliamentary officials on February 25. Both the embassy and the parliament office rejected suggestions the protests were discussed, however. They insisted that the meeting was focused on “improving relations” and gearing up for the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties.

However, a day after the meeting, the government-run Global New Light of Myanmar printed a picture of the Amyotha Hluttaw Speaker U Khin Aung Myint shaking hands with Ambassador Lee Baek-soon. Directly under the photo, the paper ran an article that praised the “good results” the government was achieving in negotiating an end to the spate of factory protests.

The government also took to state-run TV to announce that the demonstrations were hurting factory profits and chasing away foreign investors. The factory workers were warned to end their strike and accept modest pay rises offered by the foreign factories.

About half the picketers took the bait, many scared off by the police clampdown. But many hundreds more continued the strike, only to find the announcement presaged an even more violent attack.

On March 4, their protest was quashed by police and plain-clothed thugs toting read armbands emblazoned with the word “duty”. More than a dozen more were arrested.

Yangon Region minister U Zaw Aye Maung, who has led efforts to negotiate with the workers, declined to comment on whether the auxiliary group was sent at the South Korean embassy’s behest.
But the response from the embassy has not surprised international labour groups familiar with the country’s tactics.

“[South] Korean employers are notorious for their hostility toward unions and strikes,” said Eunji Kang of Korean House for International Solidarity. “There is a high suspicion that Korean embassies take any steps available (even unlawful ones) to protect the benefits and interests of Korean entrepreneurs and investors.”
After the March 4 crackdown, the Myanmar government went into damage control, dredging up legal codes from the 1890s to prove the legality of mobilising the plain-clothed force.

In contrast to its long-winded defence of the Cambodia episode, this time the South Korean embassy stayed silent – at least, until it agreed to speak to The Myanmar Times.

“The South Korean government mistakenly thinks that it’s alright to export its harsh, rights abusing tactics in dealing with labor protests to other countries, but it’s not,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division. “If the workers are attacked by police responding to the embassy’s call, the rest of the international community should call out Seoul as being equally responsible for those rights violations.”

But workers said it makes little difference to them who sent in the attack dogs to end their protest.
“I don’t know about the politics, but I am deeply scarred from that [March 4] crackdown,” said Ma Thanda Aye, a worker from the E-Land garment factory. “The pain of injuries is not important, but the image of these events replays and sometimes I see them again before sleeping.”
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Government changes plan on IDs for migrant workers in Thailand

By Kyaw Phone Kyaw   |   Tuesday, 24 March 2015 

Migrant workers in Thailand have been given an unexpected grace period, the deputy labour minister announced yesterday. Speaking at a press conference, U Htin Aung said the estimated 645,000 Myanmar workers in Thailand would be able to retain the so-called pink card that entitles them to work for an extra year.

A Myanmar migrant worker in Chiang Mai holds her young child. (Kaung Htet/The Myanmar Times)

 

The pink cards issued by the Thai government to Myanmar migrant workers were due to expire next week under an agreement by which the Myanmar government would issue its nationals in the kingdom certificates of identity.

But following a ministerial-level meeting earlier this month, the Thai government agreed to honour the pink cards until April 2016. During the extra year of grace, the workers can register for a work permit and visa. They also have until 2017 to produce their national registration card (NRC) and official household document in order to acquire a passport.

“Migrant workers now have much longer to get a passport,” U Myo Aung, director general of the Department of Labour, told reporters. However, undocumented Myanmar workers in Thailand, whose numbers are unknown but are thought to be large, do not appear to benefit from this agreement.

The Myanmar government is also urging Thai employers to allow their Myanmar workers time to go home to make the necessary arrangements.

Deputy minister U Htin Aung said officials were under instructions to issue passports as quickly as possible, perhaps even within one day, to applicants with the necessary documentation.

The government has also succeeded in persuading the Thai authorities to extend the grace period for Myanmar migrants working in the fishing industry, where they spend a great deal of time at sea or out of reach of information, said Myo Aung. However, rural workers were not granted any extra time.

“The Thai government agreed to our request only for the fishing-boat workers,” said the deputy minister, adding that the Thais would open offices in 22 districts for that purpose.

Though exact figures are unavailable, some observers estimate there may be as many as 3 million Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand, many of them undocumented.

U Ko Tun, a coordinator with the Migrant Workers’ Rights Network, accused the Myanmar government of playing into the Thais’ hands out of weakness. He said the pink card extension plan would benefit the Thai government, since the migrants would have to pay about 2500 baht (about K80,000), plus as much as 10,000 baht (K320,000) to brokers.

He said the Myanmar government should resurrect a 2009 plan for extending the documents of 1.68 million temporary passport holders who, under current rules, have to return home when the passport expires. A similar system led last year to the mass exodus of Cambodian workers, causing a temporary labour shortage in Thailand.

“It would be better for undocumented workers if the Myanmar government could issue them with NRC and household lists so they could get passports and work permits,” U Ko Tun told The Myanmar Times.
The Thai government has said it will arrest and repatriate undocumented Myanmar migrant workers after 2016.http://kyawphonekyaw

Workers issue threat to government over arrests

By Kyaw Phone Kyaw   |   Monday, 09 March 2015

Factory workers on strike for a wage increase yesterday threatened to unite with other protest movements in Yangon if the government does not explain why plainclothes “thugs” attacked the mostly female picketers last week.

Garment worker Ma Aye Aye Phyo reads a statement to the media at Mahabandoola Park in downtown Yangon yesterday evening. Photo: Zarni Phyo

The workers have warned that unless the government explains its role in breaking up the demonstrations and releases arrested workers and activists, they will join forces with student protesters, land grab demonstrators and monks.

On March 4, vigilantes decked in red armbands emblazoned with the word “duty” helped riot police break up a labour protest in Yangon’s Shwe Pyi Thar Industrial Zone. They had planned to march on downtown Yangon but instead 14 workers and an activist were arrested in the crackdown, workers said at a press conference yesterday evening at Mahabandoola Park.

“Most of us are women, so we might be arrested easily, but the government made the arrests violently, beating us. It shows the aggressive desire of the government,” the workers said in a statement read out at yesterday’s conference.

The newly detained factory picketers joined two labour union leaders and an activist who were arrested mid-February during violent clashes with police. Blamed for allegedly instigating the protests, the union leaders and activists are facing charges under section 505(b) of the Penal Code which permits imprisonment for committing an offence that can disrupt the state or public tranquility. The arrested workers are being charged with rioting under section 147.

Just under 4000 garment and shoe factory workers employed by five different Chinese and South Korean companies launched the strike in January. While demands varied between factories, all called for a K60,000-a-month (US$60) minimum wage, which the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers’ Association called unaffordable.

Many of the workers were lured back to work by a K300-a-day pay boost, in part because they could no longer afford to go strike, having already lost more than a month’s wages.

Several hundred labourers from Costec and Ford Glory garment factories refused to return to the assembly lines yesterday, but they shied away from any demonstrations after the latest round of

violence.

Regional minister U Zaw Aye Maung, who has led efforts to negotiate with the workers, declined to comment about the recent arrests. He was dismissive of those workers who remain on strike.

“We cannot solve the issue for everyone,” he said. “Perhaps some continue to disagree, but most of them have accepted our

negotiations.”

U Zaw Aye Maung said that he did not have any information about the armband-toting thugs involved in last week’s clashes.

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